highway robbery
Popping other ships has always made me nervous. It is so blatantly violent, impossible to prevent one side or the other from breaking holster. I've done it plenty of times, with plenty of men and women dying all around. The biggest problem is that you don't know what is waiting for you. Even with the most extensive of scans...knowing the number, location and size of folks and guns inside...it is impossible to tell what factors will be thrown against you. Maybe it will be a sharpshooter, maybe it will be a pregnant woman. I prefer walking into a room before anyone else, so I can see and feel and report, or pull back if need be. It's how I have always worked, and I'm still alive after a decade and a half of it. More than can be said for any number of poppers.
Runners who prey on other ships are brutal, their ships and crews the toughest and fastest around. Some pop only fellow runners: scavengers picking on predators. Others choose easy marks, settlers or private ships, and in general they are the most despicable rusters in space. The most highly regarded are those who pop corporate ships: those are dangerous, profitable runs, and those crews risk everything knowing that any other Runner worth bolts will protect them. Men like Zacharias, who undermine even the strongest corps...they are the force that keeps this universe in order, strange as it seems. Even those who try to pop Federal ships are not so highly thought of, though they tend to use their own blazing suicide to make some sort of political statement, they are quickly forgetten.
Caban hates attacking other ships, he is still too close to his small-trader past to feel entirely comfortable destroying livelihoods. The problem is, of course, is that we're completely out of food. I calculated some jumps that would get us out of here fast, but it makes my hull hurt just thinking about them. Caban looked over my shoulder at the potential paths, squeezed my arm, and told me it wasn't worth it. Even if I was strong enough, I wouldn't really want to pull them. Maybe Jamieson would have gotten me to do it, but that man never learned the definition of impossible, and he was always hungry. I haven't thought of him in a long time.
Ghosts don't have to eat. We do.
Runners who prey on other ships are brutal, their ships and crews the toughest and fastest around. Some pop only fellow runners: scavengers picking on predators. Others choose easy marks, settlers or private ships, and in general they are the most despicable rusters in space. The most highly regarded are those who pop corporate ships: those are dangerous, profitable runs, and those crews risk everything knowing that any other Runner worth bolts will protect them. Men like Zacharias, who undermine even the strongest corps...they are the force that keeps this universe in order, strange as it seems. Even those who try to pop Federal ships are not so highly thought of, though they tend to use their own blazing suicide to make some sort of political statement, they are quickly forgetten.
Caban hates attacking other ships, he is still too close to his small-trader past to feel entirely comfortable destroying livelihoods. The problem is, of course, is that we're completely out of food. I calculated some jumps that would get us out of here fast, but it makes my hull hurt just thinking about them. Caban looked over my shoulder at the potential paths, squeezed my arm, and told me it wasn't worth it. Even if I was strong enough, I wouldn't really want to pull them. Maybe Jamieson would have gotten me to do it, but that man never learned the definition of impossible, and he was always hungry. I haven't thought of him in a long time.
Ghosts don't have to eat. We do.
posted by Scout | 8:11 PM
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